damned_institute | Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

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Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

Yuffie took the long way around, practically making it a tour of the entire town. She collared--not literally, since the nurses would've thrown fits--a few random citizens along the way, asked as many inconspicuous sounding questions as possible, and then moved on. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sneaking a few covert glimpses into stores and windows confirmed what she'd been talking about with Sam earlier; no dates, no explicitly mentioned locations outside of the town itself… how weird was that? Even the most insular of towns back on Gaia would've coughed up some kind of connection with the outside world.

It was almost like a living ghost town.

Well, maybe she was just thinking too hard. Maybe she was throwing shuriken too hard at the wrong target. Back home, she had a concrete frame of reference. Here, she couldn't take anything for granted; she had no local or international knowledge whatsoever. All she could try to do was get a profile of the immediate area and build it up and out from there. Theories were already budding, popping up like weeds hit by Quadra-Haste, but without facts to back them up, theories were like sand in a desert.

Not that she didn't want to share those theories, sand or not. She did. A lot.

Once she'd developed a viable mental map of the place (as viable as she was gonna get given the time constraints), Yuffie swung back around and jogged back to North Street. From there, she took the alley; a quick right turn; slow to a trot, and there. Her cheeks were tinged pink from the cold winter air, and they stung as she poked her head in through the door.

Okay, so maybe she was a little early after all. That was cool. Very cool. She had some time to set things up, to pretend that she wasn't hideously under prepared for this lunch date. Stepping into the warmth, Yuffie surreptitiously cased the place out as she headed to a table. Homey, in a way that almost reminded her of some of the up-and-coming rural towns. Automatically seeking out one of the more strategic seats--one with a good view of the rest of the restaurant, and one that didn't leave her totally vulnerable to mutant chairs or murderous sandwiches--she made herself comfortable, whipped out a few crumpled pieces of paper and a pen, and began to jot down her findings.

[Closed to Edgeworth.]

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622 chuckled into his mug of hot chocolate. "Yes sir." He was doing his best, he really was. He didn't want to be tense when he didn't need to be. Hopefully that would become evident as it apparently hadn't been before.

Armand blinked at being called 'sir' and then laughed. "You don't have to be as formal as all that," he murmured, blushing a little. Just tipping his chin lower and sitting back let him hide behind his hair until his cheeks cooled. "Am I not allowed to worry about you as well?"

"It wasn't said seriously," 622 explained, putting down his mug. "And apparently I'm not very good at getting that across either." He sat back, relaxing just slightly from his normal perfect posture. "You can, I'd just like to be able to assure you that things are fine."

"I do care," Armand insisted. "I don't mean to insult my other friends, but you are my best adult friend. We must never give up on getting out of here and protecting ourselves, but I also think we should live the best we can while we're here." He bit his lip. In some ways, he thought that idea may come across as radical.

"Sounds like a solid idea to me. I just never had much beyond food and a safe place to sleep to enjoy myself with," sometimes. "So that's the threshold of what I consider 'living well'." Except that also included being surrounded by other troopers and having a clear, known direction beyond a vague overall goal.

Armand leaned against the table again, eyes wide. "Is that all you want then?" He couldn't quite understand that, but he'd never lived what TK had lived. He had to sit back as their food arrived.

"It's all that I know to want. I know there's other things out there, but I don't know what they are." He then made a valiant attempt to not get completely distracted by the arrival of food. This looked good, and smelled even better. Now if only he could keep himself from downing it all in five minutes...

"Friendship is something people value. Leisure and the pursuits one can have if there is leisure." He studiously cut the steak in half and put part of it to the side until he'd eaten the rest, to save it for TK if he only ate as much as he wanted to eat.

"I didn't know to look for it. It just happened before because Commander Akobi and I saved each other's lives so many times," 622 said, remembering to swallow what food he had in his mouth before speaking. The stuff tasted just as good as it smelled. Akobi had likely been a lot better at that sort of thing than 622 was. But he tried not to think about that while he was enjoying food, even though he almost wanted to think about it. The Commander was someone who shouldn't be forgotten.

"Do you think my wanting to be your friend takes away from what you had with your commander?" Armand took both his hands from the table and hid them as well as dropped his chin.

"No. What happened with Commander Akobi was just... different. I can't explain it well." Well, this subject seemed to always kill everything else right quick. "I won't forget him or what happened to him, but I'm trying not to get preoccupied with thinking about him, because that won't help and he wouldn't want it."

"I was hoping," Armand began, "you'd be able to make friends here without comparing us to him... You have to admit that people here are from such different circumstances. We're not all heroes." He still didn't dare look up, even though his stomach growled, wanting him to begin eating.

"I try not to. You're definitely my best friend now, but it's so different from what I knew before that it confuses me sometimes." He didn't miss the interjection from Armand's stomach. "And you really should eat." He got back to doing so himself, doing his damnedest not to just inhale the food.

Reluctant wasn't the word. Timid perhaps. Armand lifted his chin and tucked his loose hair behind his ears before sitting up completely and starting to eat. He looked up from his plate and across the table several times as if making sure TK was eating too. "I know we're not... our relationship can't be the same, but what about it confuses you? We talk frankly with one another. We fight together when there's danger. We... trust one another. That means a great deal to me."

"Everything that you came from and what shaped you is completely alien to me. I'm from something completely different. That doesn't mean nothing's going to work, but it just means it takes me a lot longer to understand how you think sometimes." He smiled slightly, looking up at Armand. "But those things do mean a lot to me, and I'm thankful that we're friends."

"No matter how we got here, we are both people. I won't let anyone claim you are not a person, because of how you were born!" He ate a bit more quietly, then finally asked, "Is there something you wish me to explain, if I can?"

"I didn't really mean it like that..." He hadn't known that just talking could be so difficult before. "Not that I can think of. But if I do need something specific explained, I'll be sure to ask you."

"That wasn't a direct reference to what you said. Not really. But it is one of the things that is different. I grew up with a family, more or less. My sister is family. And I had a real education." He wasn't simply conditioned to obey and taught to fight. "Your superiors treat you like an object to use and discard. That makes me very glad you're here, where we can be together. So I can know you."

"And I had other men I trained with." Although by now all of them, including himself, were dead. "And I don't know about the other officers. It wasn't my place to judge."

"It wasn't then, but you died for them. I think you're perfectly free to judge anyone you want now." He frowned.

"I would if I felt comfortable doing so. But it wouldn't feel right to me." Hopefully that wouldn't get taken the wrong way, and a bit of his worry over that was possibly showing. He still didn't know what would and wouldn't get taken personally.

All this talking was certainly helping him slow down with his eating. He'd only had three quarters of the food on his plate.

Armand bit his lip, frowning worriedly but he didn't pursue the notion. He ate a few more bites of his meat, then started on the vegetables. He didn't want to upset TK further. "I understand," he finally said. He wasn't sure he agreed, but he wondered what would happen if someone tried to convince him he should judge Percy harshly.

"Is there anything else you wanted to do today?"

622 didn't know what else to say, so the remainder of the food disappeared from his plate.

"No, I really don't know what else to do." Training and food were the only ideas he'd had.

"I wish the bookstore had more interesting books," he said. After just a moment, he offered TK the rest of his meat. He'd eaten his fill. Armand sipped somewhat nervously at the chocolate.

622 took the offered food, managing a "Thank you" before starting in on the meat. "Some of the shops look like they might have useful tools in them, but they'd need to be stolen, and I've never done anything like that before."

Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

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